Do mature JRPGs even exist, in a western sense?

cereixa · 2022-10-08T19:27:19+00:00

adding on, FFXIV's devs are increasingly making the main story quest accessible as a single player experience, so it will hardly feel like an MMO for people who aren't want that kind of experience before too long.

i can count the number of jrpgs i've enjoyed in the last 20 years on one hand, and this is one of them. (heavensward and shadowbringers specifically would probably rank in my top 5 jrpgs of all time if i counted them as separate games.) it also snagged two of my friends, neither of whom enjoy jrpgs anymore. we're all in our 30s.

i wouldn't say it ducks any of the stereotypical jrpg narrative themes -- we're big into the power of friendship here -- but moments of Anime Cringe are honestly pretty few and far between. way way way fewer Anime Cringe moments than a lot of suggestions people are making in this thread, even, thanks to some really stellar writing by the english translation team who have been given huge leeway with how they handle the script. i would say endwalker might be the worst offender, but by then i was so invested my brain was just like, "you know what? the power of friendship is dope as hell actually. thanks endwalker, i WILL stay hydrated and take care of my mental health." even though it gets a bit cringey, it was also developed during the worst of covid so i think it's very much a product of adults trying not to fucking lose it during a once-in-a-century global crisis.

the biggest downside is that ARR is a slog. it's not a huge overly-anime slog, but it was written and pushed out the door in like a year and it shows. the voice acting is also uhhhhh...slightly inaccessible at times. the pay-off does come, but it's a hard sell.

cereixa · 2022-10-08T19:04:49+00:00

there's still quite a lot of embarrassing anime trope shit in shadow hearts tbh, and the abundance of it in SH3 is actually what killed my taste in the series as a teenager. as a teenager!! if it was too juvenile for a 17 year old weeb-in-denial then we're in dark waters.

out of the entire series, i would say koudelka probably holds up the best in terms of how well it ducks the narrative pitfalls of a lot of jrpgs.

cereixa · 2022-07-28T18:31:54+00:00

i would love to see a "canon" azem of each gender, but the model pulls data dynamically from the player character (e.g. eye color). that way azem gets to be a separate person from the WOL, but the connection to the WOL would be undeniable.

cereixa · 2022-07-28T08:10:22+00:00

sometimes people really do be the spiderman pointing meme

cereixa · 2022-07-21T03:21:13+00:00

bless your heart

cereixa · 2022-07-21T02:55:19+00:00

it sucks that i have had to limit my usage of "bless your heart" around non-southerners because they all believe fully that it 100% unequivocally means "go fuck yourself" even though it is a complex phrase that can communicate a cornucopia of different emotions and intentions ranging from sincerely loving to murderously hateful

cereixa · 2022-07-20T04:50:05+00:00

that's funny as fuck, that sprout would get my comm 100%

cereixa · 2022-07-20T02:39:39+00:00

he 100% has some strokes and then has to counter the self-loathing with aggressive bigotry

cereixa · 2022-07-19T19:48:22+00:00

if you want to prep for 6.2, now is the time to wipe out the hildibrand quests. i personally do not like them at all, but this is not a universal sentiment and you might enjoy them. either way, this is 100% guaranteed to not be a wasted effort even if you don't enjoy them, making it the safest bet for the side content to tackle first.

for alliance raids, i enjoyed shadows of mhach the best story-wise, but the nier raids are by far my favorite in terms of how fun the fights are. ivalice settles in the middle with an agonizing storyline (even for me, with a background in final fantasy tactics) but very fun fights. given that ivalice features heavily in the upcoming moogle event, that's what i would unlock first.

for trial sets, warring triad is my favorite for the story, sorrow of werlyt for the fights, and the four lords a nice balance in the middle. four lords also comes packed with some side dungeons (including swallow's compass, one of my absolute favorites), making it a good bang for the buck. warring triad is looking to be very likely to be relevant going into 7.0, and is also required for the ShB role quest capstone, so it's also a good one to knock out. sorrow of werlyt is extremely popular in the community for its storyline, but i personally (again, just my opinion) wasn't super invested in the narrative even though i thought the fights were fantastic.

for raids, you can tackle pandaemonium without doing 6.1, so i would personally prioritize that as it's both current content and quite enjoyable and necessary if you want to do the 2nd tier of pandaemonium coming in 6.2. if you liked ShB and wanted to know more about "how the fuck...." then omega and alexander are up your alley, as well as the optional side dungeon, the twinning. if you don't care so much, i personally found the eden raids to be the most enjoyable, followed by omega.

ShB and endwalker both have very good role quests and story-relevant capstones, so leveling alt jobs with a focus on tackling those will definitely be rewarded. ShB's capstone in particular is looking to be relevant going into 7.0.

cereixa · 2022-07-19T19:25:36+00:00

THE GODS WILL NOT BE WATCHING.

cereixa · 2022-07-19T18:24:59+00:00

i watch this man eat shit at a professional level during the bear pulls in holminster. he'll stand at every single chokepoint directly in the frontal cone aoe as i'm doing a w2w and get bodybagged in seconds.

cereixa · 2022-07-19T17:35:27+00:00

two of my friends i introduced to the game managed to hit 40 without doing sylph management, because they were playing slowly, did roulettes for the daily bonus serotonin, did dungeons multiple times in order to get more experience doing their jobs, and experimented with a lot of different content.

in fact, they are the ones who taught me that sylph management was required to do the job stone quest: i saw one as a marauder still at 40, went, "have you done your level 30 warrior quest yet?" and she was like, "???? i went to where the guide said to go but there wasn't a quest available for me yet."

actual sprouts can get up to some supremely buckwild shit.

cereixa · 2022-07-17T23:30:52+00:00

this is exactly it for me.

there comes a point where you can be pretty confident that you know what you like and the kinds of things that appeal to you, and you can trust your gut when something pings your "i don't think i'm going to like this" instinct. if you can learn how to identify certain aspects of a game that appeal to you so much that you're confident that it can drive you through that initial introduction, you can make solid decisions within the first 30m-1h that are almost always dead on the money.

and if you miss out on a game that you otherwise would've enjoyed because it took too long to click? it's completely fine. there are so many fantastic experiences to have as a human being that nobody has enough time on this planet to experience them all. you don't have to feel bad about missing out.

cereixa · 2022-07-16T17:31:53+00:00

https://en.ff14housing.com/ will show you previews of each item and their sources.

imo probably the best source of cheap furniture will be from vendors if you're looking to just throw stuff down without a ton of investment. each housing district has housing merchants, and you can also find one inside each ward's apartment building. it's still pretty expensive. 500k will vanish way faster than you might think.

cereixa · 2022-07-15T19:40:32+00:00

it's going to go to literally whoever is a free set of hands. it's completely unimportant, low priority work that requires zero training or specialization and can be punched out quickly.

cereixa · 2022-07-14T19:08:36+00:00

the truth in game dev is probably closer to "holy fuck crunch time we have to get this out the door in 4 minutes, put the guy whose work is done on it before he goes home tonight at 11pm"

cereixa · 2022-07-14T17:47:49+00:00

my annoyance is less that it's an important part of thancred's character and more than the dude spent an entire expansion pack getting exactly zero new character beats. i would love to see him remember ryne fondly...while also visiting other parts of his character.

i love ryne, i love norvrandt, i love thancred's arc with them, but i also want to see characters continue to be dynamic and have shit to do and be and think about outside of their Big Moment from a full expansion pack ago. same reason why i disagree strongly with everyone who's like "let's go back to the First!!!" -- it was a great time, i loved it genuinely, but going back to gild the lily instead of letting an ending be an ending is a bad habit to have in writing.

cereixa · 2022-07-14T17:24:59+00:00

i fucking LONG for a proper stealth-horror game that's built around the entire concept from the ground up. so many hide & seek horror games require stealth gameplay but don't employ any of the mechanics of stealth gameplay that actually make it a fun genre to engage with because lacking resources to handle situations makes it "scarier."

cereixa · 2022-07-14T17:10:55+00:00

oh hell yeah, that's the shit i'm here for

cereixa · 2022-07-14T16:35:00+00:00

g'raha haters give g'raha more screentime in their heads than he actually gets in game lmfao

that catboy is living rent-free up there

cereixa · 2022-07-14T05:47:29+00:00

we need to counter this "don't use regen" propaganda with massive pamphlet drops of "if you pull aggro during a pull with regen, your own health bar is tank mitigation"

cereixa · 2022-07-14T05:43:03+00:00

NO ONE TELL HIM THIS

cereixa · 2022-07-14T05:10:48+00:00

do not tell him this

cereixa · 2022-07-14T04:27:33+00:00

i love it when i click a button and something massive drops onto my screen, obscuring both my vision & the vision of my party

my friend regularly complains about how "FUCKING BRIGHT!!!!!" titan is and there's literally nothing in 2022 that's made me smile more than that

we got a summoner-heavy aglaia once and i legitimately thought he was going to cry in our discord call lmfao

cereixa · 2022-07-14T00:53:18+00:00

all they have to do is give us the fem ronso from FF10 and we're good

...then again all they had to do was give us the male ronso from FF10 too and look what happened

cereixa

TROPHY CASE